The Soulstealer's Tale

The Soulstealer’s Tale

“Haunted? Please, spare me from all the get-lost-in-the-woods-and-wake up-with-you-ass-in-a-plastic-bag bullshit. All of that shit. It’s pathetic.” Wes grabbed the bottle of vodka and took a quick swig. He was already intoxicated, and had been noticeably for the past twenty minutes; alcohol became the catalyst for a seemingly introverted Wes Cahill. At six foot with a two years worth of consistent muscular build due to rigorous physical training at the United States Marines boot camp, the twenty-one year old bore every characteristic of a man who could’ve pounded Captain Morgan without grimacing in the least from its harshness.

“Oh really? How do you know? You’ve never even heard of the tale.”

Wes just shook his head mockingly and put a hand down, close to the fire to taste the heat. “Enlighten me Corinne.” The four students were seated in a full circle around the campfire. The flames crackled and burned in a red-orange sea ever-powerful against the wooded background and the darkness of the forest-world. The embers glowed like fiery diamonds and escaped into the night air. Crickets cried near and in the distance. Corinne Hyde grabbed her Corona and downed the rest of the bottle, setting it atop the pebbly ground beneath her feet. Brannon McDermott flung his over shoulder before announcing he was going to take a piss. The bottle cracked against a nearby tree. A raccoon, startled by the impact paused for a moment and disappeared beneath a thick log.

“Okay.” A mysterious little grin came to her face as if concealing a secret none else knew. Wes was not fazed. “Have you ever heard the Sole Tale?”

“Sole Tale?”

“Yes. S-o-l-e.”

Despite how pathetic he thought this to be, Wes decided to play along with Corinne then argue. The shirt she’d worn outlined her perfect curves in the fire’s light and Wes’ hungry eyes had taken careful notice. “No.”

“Wait a sec till I get back.,” Brannon interrupted. Don’t tell ‘em about it yet,” and he located a spot twenty-foot in behind a leafy thorn bush.

“You know, I’ve lived in Leafgrove for half my life. We practically grew up telling horror tales. The lost travelers of Cold Creek. the legend of Sleepy Hollow, the night-wandering soul of Haeckel. Some schmuck blows the originals out of proportion and then the whole world knows them as scary stories to tell around the campfire to frighten little kids.”

“But we were once kids,” came the voice of Jacob Marchand who’d been silent for a while, just sitting up against a heap of logs listening, and basking in the sweet heat of the fire. “…and we fell for it. I remember, living in Sherman Oaks till I was eight. We’d all hear the stories. The legends. The headless rider was my favorite.” He pulled a Marlboro from his pocket and put his Zippo’s fire to it. “My grandfather told me that one from his rocking chair for the first time. Rest in peace gramps,” and made a gesture of respect to the night sky above.

“You got an extra I could bum?”

Reluctantly, Jacob took his upside-down cigarette-his special strike-and handed it off to Wes, then threw the pack to the fire. The flames ate it up.

“Sole? Recognize the name?” Corinne asked again.

Jacob grabbed the Absolut from Wes and took a shot for himself. The bottle was three-quarters gone, and Wes annoyingly watched the alcohol go down. “No…I’ve never heard of it. What like, the spirit of some dead guy roams the woods, stealing other people’s souls?”

She shook her head slowly, amused by his ignorance and a fed a stick to the flames.

“Well I don’t know. I’m just trying to take a guess.”

Brannon returned and zipped his fly up. “Tell him the tale.”

Corinne’s face glowed against the fire’s luminance which heated her summer-peach cheeks. Her hands basked in the wonderful heat. “Yes…the tale.”
Brannon took seat on a thick-necked log next to Jacob who, in between sips of his Heineken, appeared to have taken a deep interest and sat positioned with back resting against his knapsack. He picked at his gums with a toothpick.
“Wes, do you know how stories come about? Some traveler just doesn’t pull old tales right out of his ass. There’s always some element of truth behind the stories. Always. Like where we are. Right now.” Her eyes then surveyed the entire night sky, dark like the deeps of the ocean with bands of stars scattered about the galaxies. “Fifty-four years ago. This winter. Right here, on the ground we get loaded on.”

Wes inhaled more of the cancer and took another swig of the Absolut. His eyes were heavy and groggy from a slight drunkenness.

“Brannon knows the tale,” and she turned to meet his eyes.
“Jarek,” he simply said.

“Yes….and Annabelle. I doubt people remember exactly what happened that night. I do…even fifty-four years after it happened.”

“Sadistic motherfucker from what I’ve heard,” Jacob said quietly, baseball cap half-covering his eyes.

“He was a woodsman…built a little house off to the west, not too far from where we are. In there lived his wife and daughter, Lilly. Jarek, contrary to popular belief, was actually a decent man, a family man. He did love his wife, for the years they’d lived in that house…and their daughter even more. She was a baby…not more than a year.”

“How do you know that?” Wes asked questionably. “Is he a close friend of yours?”

Corinne’s firm stare could’ve broken rock. “No. But someone in my family was. I know every detail of what happened that fateful night. I’ve heard them enough times.” Jacob Marchand chuckled as he drank more of his beer, though her stone-face was as humorless as an undertaker.

She fed a stick to the fire and as it crackled, fiery embers escaped into the air. “They say that here in these woods, in the dead of night under the light of a full moon as it was that night, you could hear the cries of a baby in the distance. My grandfather saw her once when she was an infant. I believe her name was Lilly...and no one knows what exactly happened to her that night.” Corinne silenced a moment, as if deep in a temporary thought. “Anyway, here’s how the story goes…on December 2nd 1948…”

December 2nd 1948.

The surrounding woods were still and dark, the background in between the gaunt, thinning trunks even darker. A faint wind rustled the weak masses of leaves that were clinging to the branches for life. Many more were dead at the ground; each day they kept piling up. Minus the sound of the winds, there were only insects crawling through fallen leaves and slithering through broken twigs.

Deep in the wood, inside the living room of the lone log cabin Annabelle Sole kissed the man on his lips before resting her head atop his broad shoulder. This was the man who she was destined to grow old with. His face was the face of her soul mate.
As he whispered something barely audible into her ear, the auburn-haired woman felt warm in the arms of security; her eyes met the wooden crib near the wall. Baby Lilly’s tiny body was sound asleep underneath the baby-blue blanket she’d knitted two summers ago early on in the pregnancy. Each breath taken in by her little lungs made the blanket rise and fall every so slightly. Lilly’s button-nosed teddy was positioned in the corner, guarding her against bad dreams. She was truly beautiful and the man meant it in his words of utmost sincerity when he held her and she giggled with a little smile that made the sun rise ascend the horizon.
The woman’s name was Annabelle Sole and she regretted taking the name of the man to which Father McMaster had wed her to. With this man however, there was no regret.

She ran a thin-fingered hand through the man’s hair. It was coal-black, wavy and thick like a wall of fog at the peak of dawn. The tips of her fingers gently caressed the back of his hairless, smooth neck.

Kissing his ring finger, a finger which had none, Annabelle led him over to the living room’s single window. “Come. Watch the moon with me.” The usual floorboard creaked lightly underfoot as Annabelle walked across it and a small spider scuttled out from a small crack where the wall met floor. It disappeared underneath the door, to the outside darkness.

She tapped her ringed finger against the glass, tracing it back and forth slowly for no particular reason. Her eyes fixed on the above marble moon. “It’s like the eye of God, isn’t it? Here in the woods, you can see it so clearly. Surely I can imagine it’s not like that in the cities.” It glistened strongly though branches as a lone bulb in the darkness of an abandoned attic.

“It’s because of the city lights in the streets,” he said in a soft voice, almost a whisper. “They take away the beauty of it.” He was more acquainted with the life of a city than Annabelle had ever been. She was a mere farmer’s daughter for many years and that meant simplicity. It’d taken a while to fully adapt to the exposure to industrialization and marketplaces and butcher shops replacing crop fields. But, the city life was wholly different. Alive, it was. Annabelle wanted to go back and he desired to take her, where there weren’t gardens in need of everyday tending, among other things.

Yet, the full moon in the countryside was a sight never to be seen by city-dwellers.
Leading him by the hand over to the cradle where inside Lilly slept in peace, the baby-blue blanket fully guided over her tiny body. Small fingers grabbed at the corners while Teddy watched with unmoving button-eyes. “So I want you to think about it, okay Annabelle?” The man with whom she wanted to grow old with gently rubbed a finger across sleeping Lilly’s back. If not for me, for your daughter.

“So please, really think it over.” His gaze fell inside the cradle; the candle on the nightstand burned brightly and behind it, non-human shadows froze at spots on the wall. In the red-orange luminance Lilly looked peaceful as can be, like the sunset descending below evening’s horizon. Her smile made one see the face of God. When Lilly rode his shoulder as they walked hand-in-hand through the forests at dusk, it was euphoria. “You know that I always saw her as my own. I do not doubt that one day she’ll be as beautiful as you.” He leaned in with passionate lips, looking into her eyes.

“We need to just get out of here Annabelle. You, me, and Lilly…get away from all this and start over new. Maybe we can go to Wisconsin. You’ve met my brother. He’s got a grand house, extra rooms for all of us. We could begin all over from scratch…and in a few years Lilly’ll be starting school. A family, Annabelle. A family. Do you know what that is?” Annabelle saw herself in the mirror called Michael’s eyes. “I’ve never had one.” The depths seemed to never end. “This could be our chance. We can finally be together, away from….everything else that we know of here.” And in the irresistibility of his gaze, Annabelle knew what, or rather who, he was implying.

She then felt an unexpected sadness build and a tear form in her left eye. She just pulled him closer. In a soft voice Annabelle whispered, “You know I would love to more than anything. I would love to…”

“…and you could,” he finished for her. “We could.” We will.

Then she painfully said the words that’d been haunting her in between the fall of tears. “I’m a married…” and she felt two streams come down her cheeks. “I’m a married woman, Michael.” And she despised herself for the past months, each evening lying next to her spouse, next to a total stranger. It was torment, a nightmare she’d never wanted yet somehow it had become reality. Since Michael, Annabelle’s mind ceased to be at peace. There though, now, in his arms was her comfort. “I know…” was all he managed to say. He struggled to fight back an onset of emotion. “I know, Annabelle…” he repeated.

And in the wooden-walled room of the cabin that stood alone amidst the wood-world, the shadows stilled at the walls in an uneasy silence.



And somewhere, in the thick dark of the forest, vengeful eyes watched through the glass. He was here. She was with him. Where tears had once fallen, from a while back in the past, there was now a storm that’d been building for quite some time and only settled in sleep before brewing once more at the rise of the new day. Annabelle said nothing to him; they’d been distant for weeks. And she never stopped him from walking out that door. Not once.

The man had no pleasant dreams; there was just an amalgam of tortured emotion spiraling further from control and tonight it was particularly distant and about to take him. The sensation of dripping liquid came where the thorn of the bush had pierced through skin. With a venomous face and soulless eyes, the man closed his, and whispered something barely audible into the dark. His breath was visible in the cold. Opening his eyes and wearing a razorblade little smile, Jarek Sole took his first step towards the house…

Below the moon, the reflection of a stone-cold man stared back from inside the glass. It looked like glass, but actually was a left eye, one that moved no more. His face was a scarlet mess. The dirt ground squished softly under each boot’s step, pressing like into unhardened mud after the rage of a storm. A storm that rained blood.

The woman was laid out with hands folded as if deep in prayer appear. There was no coffin around her, and no people to grieve. Just dead.

Just dead as the man had wanted.

A powerful death grip clutched the knife in one hand. Fingers tightened around the hilt, nails scratching marks on the leather. A thin coat of red shone on the side of the blade as the moonlight touched upon it. The blade trembled in his hand which was twitching violently. The man buried his face within his hands, masking it with the baby-blue blanket.

In that moment, the word regret took on a new definition. He said nothing, just felt it, felt the hand gripping at his heart, palming, crushing at the ice. He wanted to vomit but dryness was eating his throat. His finger teased the blade, running it back and forth as if daring it to open skin. After another pass, it then did. The man then ran its serrated edge slowly, deep and hard across his left chest peck. He bit viciously into the blanket silencing what shrill scream would’ve undoubtedly pierced the air. He ripped at himself again, an onrush of hot pain coursing through every vein.
He removed the blanket from his face then stared at it with cold eyes. A cruel wind gust then blew past yet the man did not feel it; he just stared, harder, calculating, contemplating. The tree in front of him had thick branches and the wind swayed its dying leaves from side to side. He looked towards the tree which stood dead-still and waiting, then back to the blanket. His hands pulled the blanket to a straining tightness. Razorblade eyes looked back to a thick tree branch…



The campfire flickered as a gust came and swept through the forest. Brannon McDermott tossed a handful of thick bark inside the stone circle for the last flames to consume. He then yawned and outstretched both arms to the skies. “I’d love to hear another tale but save it for another day. On that note I think I’m gonna call it a night.” He got up and tossed a loose handful of pebbles into the darkened woods for no apparent reason. “If Jarek Sole wants to slit my guts in my sleep…” he reached down for an empty Corona bottle, “I’ll just break it over his head.”

“And what if it’s his spirit?” Wes asked.

Brannon shrugged. “Then I guess I’m fucked. Night y’all,” and he headed at a hare’s run for the tent. Jacob Marchand was asleep at the dying fire; the logs were his pillows tonight. Corinne watched him, hands behind his hand, with the bottle nearly empty at his feet.

Wes got up and cracked his knuckles. His eyes were heavy, sleep’s weight falling upon his brows and mind still disoriented from the alcohol. “Well, that was all-in-all very intriguing. But good job for making it interesting at least.” A yawn escaped him as Corinne fumbled around a tiny compartment in her knapsack. “You’re welcome Wes.” There lacked color in her voice and she didn’t look up to meet his eyes. “Ummm….say listen, I left my knapsack in the back of the truck. I really don’t wanna walk back through there right now…would you think you could spare me like…”

“Absolutely,” she answered a little quicker then Wes Cahill expected who then watched her reach into the bag at her feet. “I’ve brought my tent with the intention of using it for myself…but I think I can sneak you in. Wouldn’t want you sleeping in the truck and heaven knows you don’t wanna snuggle in with Brannon.” Though he crossed the border of being buzzed Wes didn’t mistake the little wicked grin that formed on Corinne’s face. Her cheeks glowed against the dying-down flames and her auburn hair resembled woven threads of gold. As the luminance faded, a building darkness replaced it.

Wes regained a sober composure and stood up. “Ummm…are you sure you don’t mind. I have my blanket in there and everthing.” Corinne tapped at the EMS knapsack between her knees. “I’ve taken care of it already. You could use mine. I like sharing it with people.” Then she stood to both feet and leaned her face in, two inches away from his nose bottomless ocean eyes boring into his. At the unexpectedness, Wes Cahill pulled his head back. She merely whispered, “Come,” and she grabbed his hand, leading the way into the tent at the base of a tree, a thick-trunked tree with scarecrow branch arms and leaves on the verge of death.
“You know...this doesn’t mean that I changed my mind on the ghosts. No matter what. Sorry babe, I don’t believe in such things.” Wes added then ended with a playful chuckle. Another wicked grin discretely came on Corinne’s soft face again. Her hand then secretively slipped into the partially-open top zipper of her knapsack and felt at the soft texture…the texture of her baby-blue blanket. As she led Wes stepped inside the dark tent, somewhere in the distance an eerie sound came from the depths of the wood. It was soft, barely audible but undeniably there. It was the sound of an infant crying.

Corinne smiled. “You should.”